Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Gustavo Dudamel Quotes

It’s a small city where I have a lot of time to think. The orchestra and I have had a chance to connect very well in this time. I think of all the millions of people in Los Angles. There aren’t that many millions of people in all of Sweden.

– Gustavo Dudamel

In my imagination yes, I remember, when I was six years old, I was conducting all this concert in my house. But now it’s real.

– Gustavo Dudamel

I set out to create a means whereby music could be a way of vindicating the rights of the masses.

– Gustavo Dudamel

It’s not that people don’t like classical music. It’s that they don’t have the chance to understand and to experience it.

– Gustavo Dudamel

I think that I need to learn a lot, a lot.

– Gustavo Dudamel

I wanted to play my violin and have my musical expression through the instrument. But then I was really young when I had my first opportunity to conduct.

– Gustavo Dudamel

You learn a lot about each other from a tour, musically and humanly.

– Gustavo Dudamel

With an orchestra you are building citizens, better citizens for the community.

– Gustavo Dudamel

Whenever I listen to a children’s orchestra, I learn. They feel everything, they enjoy everything, they have amazing energy.

– Gustavo Dudamel

Los Angeles is a very special city. It’s a great ethnic mix, a great cultural mix.

– Gustavo Dudamel

Classical music in Venezuela is now something like a pop concert. You can see people screaming or crying because they don’t have a ticket.

– Gustavo Dudamel

Of course, we also have to play in concert halls. This is our dream when you are a musician – to play in a good, comfortable hall with a wonderful acoustic.

– Gustavo Dudamel

I have eaten very well in Los Angeles. Marvelously!

– Gustavo Dudamel

We have to go and show these people what classical music is. We say sometimes that classical music has a small audience, but it’s because people don’t have the chance to be closer to it.

– Gustavo Dudamel

When people feel that something really special is happening on the stage, things change.

– Gustavo Dudamel

Going to a concert can sometimes be very difficult. It can be a long journey. There’s the ticket prices. But when the music goes to the community – not the community coming to the concert – they say, ‘Wow! I didn’t know that this music was so amazing!’

– Gustavo Dudamel

My relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra brought me many times to London and I will always reflect positively on that early period of development with them – their patience, their warmth, their dedication.

– Gustavo Dudamel

I live day by day.

– Gustavo Dudamel

For me, Venezuela is very important, not just because it’s a place I go to conduct, but because my family is there – my wife, my parents and my musical family.

– Gustavo Dudamel

I think it’s a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra – especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music.

– Gustavo Dudamel

Recently, I went to a disco with friends, and all the young people were saying, ‘Dudamel, we want to go to your concert, but it’s impossible because it’s sold out.’ It’s really amazing.

– Gustavo Dudamel

You have to believe that things will happen, you have to work and love what you’re doing.

– Gustavo Dudamel

I think the atmosphere of a Prom concert can change your life, in the best way. It’s so deep, the feeling you have there. The audience is so close, and there are so many of them, that you feel they are almost embracing you.

– Gustavo Dudamel

I love to travel, but sometimes it’s nice to stay in one place.

– Gustavo Dudamel

A friend gave me a CD of the ‘Pathetique’ Symphony as a Christmas present. I went home, and I put on the CD expecting to listen to Tchaikovsky. But it started ‘ta ta ta taaa.’ It was too long for me. I didn’t understand it at first, but then I fell in love, in love, in love.

– Gustavo Dudamel

People say that having three orchestras is a crazy life, but it’s better because you have three families. I want to have my own kids very soon. In future, I still want to conduct a lot, but less, to be with my family.

– Gustavo Dudamel